“I am here thanks to my grandfather,” said Lilia Bu (26, USA), winner of the LPGA Tour Chevron Championship (total prize money of $5.1 million). Boo started the 4th round of the first major tournament of the season held at The Club at Carleton Woods (par 72, 6824 yards) in Texas, USA on the 24th with a tie for 11th place, 4 strokes behind the leader, and won the come-from-behind victory after overtime. It is the second victory in the LPGA Tour career after Honda Thailand in February and the first major championship.
Boo was born and raised in California, USA, but her parents are from Vietnam. Her maternal grandfather, Dinh Du, came to the United States in 1982 after fleeing communist Vietnam with her family on a boat. Boo said that she remembered her maternal grandfather, who passed away three years ago, throughout the day’s game. “I was angry at every single little thing, but I said to myself, She said, ‘Her grandfather is with you. If you’re upset like this, if you don’t get your mind right, you’re going to really disappoint my grandfather.’” In 스포츠토토
1982, my grandfather disappeared for several months before reappearing in front of her family. It was because he was secretly hiding in the countryside and building a boat by himself. One night, her maternal grandfather told her wife and her young children that “it is time to leave for a better life.” After running for a while through the forest, a boat that could accommodate 54 people appeared.
They gathered the people of the town and put them in a boat that her grandfather had built. When the boat departed, even the people on the beach swam aboard. Eventually, the boat with 82 people on board started leaking within two days. The grandfather desperately hoped for help and fired a rescue bomb, and miraculously, a US Navy warship passing nearby found them and all of them were rescued.
Boo, who started playing golf at the age of 7, went on to UCLA and became the world’s number one amateur player. However, in 2019, when he debuted on the LPGA Tour, he made only one cut and performed poorly. When he was even contemplating quitting golf due to a fall to the 2020 Tour, he spoke to his grandfather, who was hospitalized to have his heart condition checked. His grandfather urged him to “play your best,” and a few days later he passed away unexpectedly.
Boo returned to the first tour in 2022 with three wins on the second tour in 2021. On this day, in the 4th round of the Chevron Championship, Boo caught birdies in a row on the 17th (par 3) and 18th holes (par 5), finished the game first and waited. Angel (25, USA) played an overtime game on the 18th hole with a final total of 10 under par and 278 strokes. Yin’s second shot fell into the water, and Boo calmly putt a 4m birdie putt to receive the prize money of 765,000 dollars (approximately 1.02 billion won). Boo’s mother, who watched her at the scene, wept as she thought of her father.
Boo said that he had seen a snake in the pond on the 17th hole the day before, but that day he had a ceremony by jumping into the lake next to the 18th hole. The tournament, which was held at Mission Hills Country Club in California until last year, moved to Texas for the first time this year. The winning ceremony of jumping into the pond on the 18th hole at Mission Hills has been a tradition since 1988, and attention was drawn to whether it would continue at the new golf course. Compared to the Mission Hills pond, which was managed like a swimming pool, the lake water was muddy and the weather was chilly. Boo said, “I feel good and the adrenaline rushes in, so I jumped in.” As for Korean players, Kim A-rim (28) and Yang Hee-young (34) tied for 4th place (8 under par), and Ko Jin-young (28) tied for 9th place (7 under par).